President’s Message
Our nation has always attached utmost importance to the maintenance of peace, security and order in the country and to that end, established many educational institutions. The Turkish National Police Academy (TNPA), which trains qualified personnel for the police organization, is among the most prestigious and long-established educational institutions in Turkey. Being the higher educational institution (HEI) in charge of police training across the country, TNPA trains police officers as well as mid-level and senior police chiefs.
Established in 1937 under the name of Police Institute, our institution was renamed as Police Academy after being incorporated into the Turkish higher education system in 1984, and became a member of the Turkish Inter-University Council in 2001. With an amendment made in 2015, the Police Academy was reorganized on the basis of modern police training principles and it was authorized for all types and levels of police training in Turkey.
With its proficient and experienced staff, TNPA provides police training in compliance with modern democratic values upheld by Turkey. In the new institutional structure designed in consideration of the police training models of democratic countries, mostly university graduates are admitted and trained as police officers and chiefs through professional training whereas the professionalism in field is consolidated via in-service training activities.
TNPA is composed of the Police Chiefs Training Center (PCTC), which trains police chiefs for the Turkish National Police Organization, five Police Vocational Schools of Higher Education (PVSHE) and 32 Police Vocational Training Centers (PVTC), which train police officers, and three postgraduate institutes (namely the Institute of Security Sciences, the Institute of Forensic Sciences and the Traffic Institute), which offer master’s and doctoral degrees and engage in scientific research on security-related subjects. Thanks to its competent academic staff, the Police Academy also holds academic meetings, seminars, and symposiums at national and international levels, conducts scientific research, and makes recommendations concerning the security policies.
As TNPA, our main objective is to become one of the leading institutions in the field of police training. Therefore, we place particular emphasis on international relations and cooperation in order to improve our institutional capacity as well as our knowledge and experience. In 2019, the President of TNPA was elected for the third time as the President of the International Association of Police Academies (INTERPA), which is one of the leading international organizations in the field of policing, police education and training with its 73 members from 57 countries. In addition, since 2014, the President of TNPA has been one of the Vice Presidents of the Association of European Police Colleges (AEPC), which incorporates all police training institutions across Europe.
Our academy has signed cooperation protocols with educational institutions of 20 countries and three international organizations. Within this scope, TNPA trains police chiefs and officers from many countries and provides intensive international in-service training particularly for police chiefs. Furthermore, as part of the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union, partnership agreements have been signed with 18 higher education institutions from 14 countries. TNPA still continues to grow its international networks at a fast pace.
The success of a police organization is directly related with modern and high quality training. An institution can only go further by means of the qualifications and competencies of its staff. Keeping this in mind, as TNPA, we endeavor to provide training with a democratic and civil approach on the basis of rights and liberties. We are pleased to see that the police chiefs and officers we have trained have achieved significant successes in the field whilst great improvements have been observed in the data related to national security issues.
As TNPA, we continue to train competent police officers and chiefs who respect human rights and dignity, impartiality, love, and tolerance as building blocks of their civil service, enjoy the society’s trust and support as the natural result of those values, and bring honor to their country and profession.
Prof. Dr. Yılmaz ÇOLAK
President